Pope speaks of interfaith tolerance from ancient city of Ur

Before a socially distanced crowd that spoke to the rising number of coronavirus cases in the country, Francis and other leaders urged Iraqis to be hospitable to those of different faiths and to welcome everyone. 

The message echoed comments Francis made earlier in the day in a meeting with Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in a first-of-its-kind meeting in the holy city of Najaf. The two had a “very positive” meeting that lasted about 45 minutes and “underlined the importance of collaboration,” according to a statement from the Vatican. 

The religious authority plays a role in protecting Christians and others who have suffered injustice and harm in the past, a release from Sistani’s office said after the meeting. 

Other religious leaders hope that Francis’ trip will prompt more interfaith dialogue into the future.

“I hope this first visit will be followed by other visits and that institutes will be established here for mutual understanding and interchange where students from the Vatican can come to Iraq to study for one or two years and our students can go to Christian institutes,” Mahdi Al-Nasiri, a cleric in Nassriyah, told Al Jazeera’s Simona Foltyn.

Since the 2003 US-led invasion, the Christian population of Iraq, consisting largely of Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs, has dwindled from about 1.5 million to a few hundred thousand today. 

The 2014 assault by the Islamic State displaced hundreds of thousands more from their historic homelands as well as destroyed historical sites, manuscripts and artifacts. Those items are more than museum pieces, a representative of the Shlama Foundation, a group that serves the country’s Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac populations, told Al-Monitor. They show the existence of this community and establish ties between it and the land it has called home for millennia. 

Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul and Akra Najeeb Michaeel reminded Iraqis that while the Islamic State killed thousands of Yazidis and Christians, they targeted all of humanity and also killed many Muslims.

“Today in Mosul, a majority of the people don’t accept what ISIS was doing,” Michaeel said. “Some of them tell me, ‘Father, we beg your pardon, we are very sorry about what happened to you. It’s not us, they imposed on us their own ideology, which is also against Islam.’”

Following the trip to Ur, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi declared March 6 as a national day of tolerance and coexistence.

“This dear visit, with all its welcome and national consensus on the success of its noble purposes, represented a bright spot that embodied the essence of our loving, sincere, civilized people who believe in the values of justice and peace,” Kadhimi said.